INTRODUCTION

The platform economy consists of three broad categories of companies: those that “provide digital services and products to individual users, such as social media”; those that “mediate exchange of goods and services, such as e-commerce or business-to-business (B2B) platforms”; and digital labour platforms, which “mediate and facilitate labour exchange between different users, such as businesses, workers, and consumers”. Digital labour platforms can be classified into two main types: “gig work platforms” or “location-based platforms” which refer to work that is done in a specific location (e.g., driving or domestic services); and “cloudwork” or “online web-based platforms” which refer to work that can be done remotely from anywhere in the world (e.g., online private tuition, data entry or translation).

In recent years, digital labour platforms have become an integral part of business and employment, as well as the epitome of the gig economy in Vietnam, and in the world. Against this backdrop, app-based driving has become a major focus for the international labour movement, labour scholars and policymakers worldwide. Workers, their unions, and researchers have long argued that the practices of platforms are, in many cases, “precariatising workers”, leading to “the pauperisation of labour”, and even contributing to “the extreme threat posed to the planet by the growth of contingent work, poverty, and enduring and expanding inequalities”. There have been numerous protests by platform workers around the world, and February 2020 saw the establishment of the International Alliance of App-based Transport Workers (IAATW), a network of app-based driver unions and associations. The International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF), which is the global union federation for transport workers, has made the impact of technology a central focus of its work, and the Governing Body of the International Labour Organization (ILO), the UN body responsible for labour issues, has announced plans to set international labour standards for platform work. In addition, there have been major regional and national-level campaigns and struggles, such as the proposed EU platform work directive, which, despite having been weakened from the original proposal, should make it easier for gig workers to be considered as employees.

In tandem, labour studies scholars have written extensively on various aspects of the gig economy and app-based driving. In Vietnam, however, research on this topic has been limited until recently.